Monday, 24 October 2016

Before we begin the letter, we would like to apologize to the artists and their fandoms who were mentioned in the posts and to ARMYs who were targeted without even knowing the reason.

On 23rd October around 11PM, screenshots of some posts and comments which were posted in the "FREE Board" (hereinafter "Free Room") of BTSdotcom (board where only members who go through the process of fan verification have the access to) were uploaded on various community sites.

The relevant screenshots showed criticizing remarks directed to other artists and not BTS, despite them not mentioning the artists' names. After reviewing, we confirmed that these posts were actually posted in the Free Room. We offer a sincere apology to many people who were upset by these screenshots that reached outside because we didn't take an action fast enough.

Admins have forbidden members from mentioning other artists and fandoms regardless by their names or indirectly by giving hints if they are not directly involved with BTS through our Basic Rules. Furthermore, even if they are directly involved with BTS, we strictly manage the board. However, due to managing the site, organizing group order, mass streaming, we couldn't take any immediate action and due to this reason we couldn't be tough on every post and every comment. We feel deeply responsible. We apologize from the bottom of our hearts.

Also, during the early days of opening the site, the verifying process wasn't difficult and we were able to come up with the current procedure after making many changes. For this reason, not all members went through the current verification process. This created the difference between members but we managed the site without realizing this. We're terribly sorry and we will come up with a solution for this issue as well.

Lastly, as a site, we have taken the following actions to fulfill our responsibility.

1) We have temporarily closed the board (Free Room) that caused this issue.

2) We will get rid of the members who wrote these posts in the following ways.

3) We are currently investigating to find the members who sympathized with these posts by commenting on them and we will get rid of them equally.

[Relevant members]

"They use everything to slander them (BTS) but they don't mention our boys' talent or pre debut past"

- (ID and nickname are mentioned in the original post)

"there are many rumors about blocking Korean celebrities in China", "I think the trace left by us as the first small company boy idol is really amazing", "We're always criticized about our general popularity", "ah the responses from namcho are hilarious" (namcho - community sites with more male users than female users), "honestly they didn't even start in a small company, it was a f***ing small company so don't you think this is really huge...?", "no seriously...they're the bosses of f***ing small companies but I can't smell the vibe of a f***ing small company" etc

(Board Moderators used to monitor their boards whenever they were free. Now we will assign time and territory to each moderator to manage the comments and posts in more systematic way.)

2. Are you only going to block the posters and comments who caused this issue from your site? We believe we should get at least a letter of apology from them.

: BTSdotcom does not require any verification process when members sign up and it's an anonymous site so even admins have no way of contacting them personally. We were not sure if we could get a letter of apology from these members so we decided to exclude it from our letter of apology. However, we will do our best to find these members and try to get a letter of apology.

And not allowing them to log in their account is equal to banning them. That is the maximum action we can take as a site and we are very sorry for this too. We are discussing to find a better solution.

3. When did those 5 people join the site? You didn't tell us what sort of verification procedure they went through and if you just tell us that it has changed now, I'm worried that this is going to make others think that you're trying to cloud the issue. And this is actually creating many arguments already.

: Before we explain you the procedure, we want to bow our heads and extend our apology for not explaining it in detail and for posting something that can cause issues.

(nicknames mentioned in the original post) 4 of these members registered on June 1st, the day we opened the site temporarily and they filled in their level up forms too so they were upgraded on the day of the opening and member (mentioned in the original post) registered on July 7th and filled her/his level up on the same day as was upgraded.

The following was the verification requirement at first (opened temporarily on June 1st)

* We only accept Melon because that's the only site we can count our streaming

* You must own 1 type of WINGS in the albums

* Even if you own 2 versions of the same album, they will be counted as 1

* We will only accept individual songs/FLAC downloads from Melon.

4. Please explain to us about comments being tampered. If you don't explain to us in detail as to how far these posts are true, people will think we're trying to cloud the issue and it will affect the sincerity of your feedback.

: We are sorry for creating confusion with just 2 images and a short letter. The comments were edited- comments from other posts were added to the posts, the comments weren't edited and the posts were all written inside BTSdotcom. We acknowledge the problems in the mentioned posts and we would like to apologize again for not moderating the posts and comments properly. We wanted to let you know that these posts were edited before spreading them and we apologize for not explaining the situation to you in detail.

We offer a sincere apology for causing this issue.

We will not forget your comments and we'll keep them in our hearts to show you our improvement.